I’ve recently worked with a retail company who had very poor customer satisfaction ratings. The head office sent out a questionnaire to random customers and the results were poor. A lot of the complaints were about things the store manager has no control over so they could easily have batted the problem back up to headquarters.
Instead, the staff were allotted time slots when their only job was to smile and say hello to the customers. They were to be on hand if anyone had a question. To help at the till, to say goodbye as the customer left the shop. While in their time slot, everything else became secondary to making sure that as many customers left knowing they had been seen. If anyone wanted something that meant they left their post, they were to call a colleague to help.
I wasn’t surprised to see that there was an almost immediate uplift in customer satisfaction … the head office problems were still there but they seemed to be less of an issue.
What’s more interesting is the uplift in staff satisfaction too. Staff appear to be enjoying their time with the customers and are more alert when not on “smile duty” to those customers around them. More customers have commented in passing, how much they enjoy the service they receive in the shop and everyone seems to be a little lighter.
Regular readers will know how important I think a smile is but this exercise reminded me that it’s not just the recipients who benefit but the smilers and those in the general vicinity too. There seems to be more laughter; the staff appear to gain more pleasure from what they’re doing.
Smiles cost absolutely nothing and are catching; and it’s almost impossible to not smile back at a real smile. It’s also true that your smile might be the difference that the recipient needs to carry on.
Given all of that, maybe it’s worth trying to smile more now and see how your clients, customers, visitors (and staff) respond.
